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• 1 2016-03-18T13:48:48-07:00 4.1 | Moving towards sustainable production 18 plain 2016-03-29T18:40:01-07:00 <<< 4 | Analyzing sustainability challenges in assentamentos
  
  The production of agrarian goods can be recognized as an essential component of life in assentamentos for two different reasons. First, the production of food for self-consumption constitutes a key element to support subsistence under conditions of scarcity—it upholds food safety. Nevertheless, in contrast with ecovillages, where food is mainly produced for internal consumption, food in assentamentos is also produced for selling. Indeed, the production of agrarian goods represents the chief activity of the vast majority of assentados.
  
  The decision on what goods to produce and how to organize production is first discussed collectively by assentados in the establishment phase, with input from studies by INCRA and MST technical assistants. This decision also depends on the particular setting of the assentamento (quality of soil, distance to cities, size of properties, climate and environment, etc.) and influences the spatial distribution that the assentamento will have. Due to the often small size of parcels in the cases we examined, most assentados opt for planting crops, instead of growing cattle [21:15]. While assentamentos closer to the city tend to produce fruits and vegetables—which grow faster and allow a higher profit margin—those more distant focus on the production of grains, like rice or beans, widely consumed in Brazil.
  
  Assentados commercialize agrarian goods through various channels. One of them consists in selling to governmental food procurement programs, which target small farmers as providers. Another example is selling at street markets in cities close to the assentamento. As planned under the general scheme of agrarian reform in Brazil, the production and commercialization of agrarian goods represent the main source of income for assentamentos. In what follows, we will describe the main sets of challenges we found when we analyzed interview content related to these activities through the lens of sustainability.
   

  1. Protecting environmental conditions

  If agrarian production is to be sustainable, it cannot degrade the soil, water, and other environmental conditions that enable its continued realization. Assentados are not obliged to produce without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and despite the relatively increased visibility and use of so-called “organic” production methods, a great number of assentados still opt for non-organic “conventional production”. As an interviewee reported, ‘conventional methods’ are still often perceived as “easier”, “requiring less work”, and “having faster results” [9:48]. However, based on our data, it seems to be becoming increasingly clear for small farmers that such practices lead to a variety of problems, with increasing intensity in the long-run—including accumulated soil degradation and threats to the health of assentados and the wider population.[1]
  
  Indeed, methods for organic production are gradually becoming more prevalent among assentados. Reasons apparently include reduced costs of maintenance, long-term gains obtained under these methods, and a perceived consistency of organic production with shared beliefs and values. Also, MST has recently inscribed agroecology—a particular system for organic production and associated eco-friendly practices—within its core political discourse ([7:58]; Carli, 2013; MST, 2006). However, a stronger shift to organic production seems to still require a wider dissemination of both the effects of ‘conventional production’ and the actual promises of organic production.
  
  
  Nonetheless, even when the benefits of organic production are clear, a main challenge that still hinders the shift derives from the relatively high expected risks involved in the transition from non-organic to organic production. The soil in assentamentos is frequently very degraded—precisely because, in many cases, it has been sprayed with synthetic “agrotoxics” for long periods of time, often within a monoculture logic. Hence, it can take a year or more for it to become healthy again and able to produce just by using organic or agroecological practices [9:48; 19:21]. During that transition period, however, the assentado has the pressure to produce food for self-consumption, obtain income to cover other needs and fulfill legal obligations as an assentado. As stated by one of our interviewees, when a governmental technical assistant suggested the transition to agroecological practices, she argued: “will you guarantee the sustenance of my family if I cannot produce that way?” [9:52].
  
  
  Furthermore, assentados apparently rely on limited direct economic incentives to change for organic production.[2] The main direct incentive (i.e, higher profit derived from higher selling prices, in addition to reduced maintenance costs) was described as being extremely difficult to obtain for assentados [11:32, 17:32]. The chief reason mentioned was that a higher price can only be secured when there is some kind of certification. This proves to be extremely hard to get in their cases—especially because, even assuming that the costs of the certification can be covered, guaranteeing non-contamination with “agrotoxics” requires a commitment of neighbors to also produce organically, i.e. a coordinated collective action. In many cases, this difficulty is compounded by the fact that an assentamento’s neighboring fields can host large monoculture activities maintained with “agrotoxics”, which  prevent them from obtaining the certification [11:36].
  
  
   

  2. Selling agrarian good production

  The second set of challenges relates to selling agrarian good production and obtaining enough income for meeting basic needs. Indeed, as we have seen, most assentados reported difficulties in selling their products. Today, the main channel used to commercialize their production is the PAA (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos) and other publicly-funded food procurement programs, such as PNAE (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar). However, interviewees reported that the stability of income under these programs is frequently compromised because of changes in public administration, which lead to unexpected modifications in the quantity of demand. [11:26] Government procurement programs also incorporate “annual limits” that prevent assentados from selling overproduction from particularly good crops, resulting in profit losses [7:73, 23:98].
  
  
  Assentados also reported that they find it difficult to sell their products to private companies (such as supermarkets), as wholesale buyers in large commercialization networks tend to require a stable provision of bulk quantities which are rarely, if ever, attained by individual assentado families [31:37].
  
  The ability to circumvent these limitations only seems to occur when there are strong collective initiatives, able to more efficiently find alternatives for commercialization, like production and/or commercialization cooperatives [17:10; 17:20].
  
  
  The main alternative for assentados that are not organized in cooperatives and that do not join food procurement programs is to either sell to atravessadores—people who buy from little farmers and sell to supermarkets and other retailers—or to directly sell their production in street markets or to small vendors in the nearest town [23:102]. However, especially when selling through atravessadores, the profit margins and stability of income are usually significantly lower than in organized cooperative cases.
  
  Thus, to commercialize at large scales and benefit from potentially higher profit margins and increased stability, assentados seem to need to develop and maintain collective initiatives that serve that purpose, either by putting together goods produced in ‘individual’ parcels or by producing cooperatively in the first place [17:27]. In assentamentos, such collective initiatives usually take the form of legally-established cooperatives or associations, which can act as touchpoints between the settlement and the world beyond its boundaries—including government agencies, surrounding communities and commercialization networks [11:29, 17:33]. They thus play relevant roles in intermediating for service provision, facilitating knowledge exchange, and making assentados’ collective demands and proposals more easily heard by government or society. 
  
  
   

  3. Diversifying production: moving beyond primary-sector activities

  The potential instability of income generation mentioned before is closely tied to the nature of agrarian production. When assentados rely exclusively on agrarian production as their main source of income, factors like excessive rain, frost, plagues, climate variations, among others, can ruin their production and simply leave them without any income for the rest of the year [19:32]. Like many other small farmers, assentados need direct insurance for these eventual risks. For the assentados we interviewed, these impacts appear to be dampened only by the presence of strong collective initiatives that allow sharing consequences of shocks among multiple individuals, and progressively devising means of coping with them.[3]
  
  Although most assentamentos focus on the production of raw agrarian goods, we found in some cases that these are processed on site and turned into goods like jam, chocolate, roasted coffee or even cosmetics. These processed goods incorporate added value and were reported to result in higher profit margins and more stable income. Other assentamentos also complement their income through the provision of services, such as offering courses and organizing workshops for assentados and nearby residents. However, this did not seem to be very widespread. Indeed, moving from the primary sector (raw goods) production to the secondary sector (processed goods) or the tertiary sector (services) presupposes the capacity to organize and maintain collective initiatives—as the required investments and processes cannot be individually undertaken by assentados [23:15].
  
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  [1] This perception converges with recent studies (Mäder et al., 2002).
  [2] PRONAF offers a special credit line for Agroecological Production since 2005. For more information about it, see MMA (2007).
  [3] Fafchamps and Gubert (2007) provide a detailed economic analysis of the formation of “risk sharing networks” in rural Philippines, and their main finding resonates with our observations of collective initiatives in Brazil’s assentamentos: “geographic proximity—possibly correlated with kinship—is a major determinant of mutual insurance links among villagers” (2007: 326). Rather than kinship, geographic proximity in assentamentos may be related to a shared history of struggle between the sem terra, but the consequence is similar: under certain conditions, it leads to “mutual insurance links”.